


twilight-and you

by GreatLoversLieInHell



Series: Drarry Ficlets [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Ficlet, M/M, Not Epilogue Compliant
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 00:34:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29144523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GreatLoversLieInHell/pseuds/GreatLoversLieInHell
Summary: “Did you know,” Draco says softly, “that we witches and wizards get our powers from the Moon?”
Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Series: Drarry Ficlets [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2144481
Kudos: 13





	twilight-and you

**Author's Note:**

> Title stolen from the poem El Beso, by Angelina Weld Grimke. I recommend you read it [here.](https://poets.org/poem/el-beso)

“Did you know,” Draco says softly, “that we witches and wizards get our powers from the Moon?”

Harry grips Draco’s arm tighter against the icy wind that seems to blow through the thick, cable knit jumper that covers his thin frame. He looks up at the full, softly glowing moon that hangs in the sky like a silver pendant, cold and far out of reach. This far North they are far enough from the muggle city lights that most of the stars should be visible. He tries to remember the constellations he had committed to memory as a teenager--Orion, the great hunter; Taurus, the bull; Caelum, the sculptor’s chisel. He forgets the rest.

Draco, who would have once been annoyed at the way Harry simply stares up at the stars instead of responding, continues calmly, “there’s a legend amongst the Sacred Twenty-Eight that if the moon were to vanish, we’d all lose our magical abilities.”

“Muggles walked on the moon once.” Harry replies.

Draco frowns. “I think you’re having me on again.”

“I’m not.” Harry smiles and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. He offers one to Draco before lighting his own and letting the warm smoke fill his mouth and lungs. “I saw it on the telly. There was a special about it on the BBC.”

“You can’t believe all the rubbish you see on the telly,” Draco says, as if it weren’t Harry who had taught him that in the first place.

The world is quiet. They are leaning against the railing of a cabin hundreds of kilometers Northwest of Inverness, hidden away in the Scottish Highlands, where the forests give way to rugged moors. The cabin is built into the rocky hillside, overlooking Loch something-or-other, in stone so old it’s as if it had always been there, long before Picts or Celts or any people at all had walked this wild land.

Harry looks up at Draco, whose aquiline nose and sharp features were illuminated by the moonlight, making him appear ethereal, insubstantial. His broad shoulders are braced against the wind and darkness. Draco never minds the cold.

After a few drags of their cigarettes, Harry asks quietly, “Do you think that’s true?”

“Hmm?”

“If the Moon disappeared, do you think magic would disappear too?”

Draco takes one last drag, then snuffs his cigarette out on the wooden railing. “I don’t know. Probably. I try not to think about it.”

Harry tries to envision a younger, more innocent Draco staring up at the same moon that hovered above them now. He finds it is impossible. The younger Draco he envisions is nothing more than an illusion, the kind of person he wants Draco to be, same as the shallow, self-important Draco he knew in school. And he remembers another BBC special which had said that indigo buntings stared at the stars their whole childhood, quietly learning how to navigate the slow-turning planet. Draco, birds, celestial bodies, Inverness, the piercing night wind, Draco, the birds, celestial bodies-

“What are you thinking about?”

Harry blinks. His eyes are dry from the cold air. Small clouds of condensation briefly form and die as he breathes out the last puffs of smoke. He replies, “Indigo buntings.”

“When I was _really_ young,” Draco says, “I used to wish mother, father, and I could all live in a palace on the moon. I thought it must be quite beautiful there. I liked the way the manor grounds looked in the snow, and I thought it must look similar. Just a white vastness. No boring soirées, no ministry.” He smiles privately, only to himself. “Now I can’t imagine anything worse.”

_Tell me more_ , Harry aches to say. _Tell me about the child you were, the person you are, so I can construct you when you’re gone. I don’t want to forget. I don’t want to misremember you as you are. It is a violation. Memory is not real. Memory is the least real thing there is._

Instead, he simply says, “I always hated the cold.”

Draco looks at him impassively. He senses there is more to that story, but it is not to be spoken into the cold vast darkness of a highland night. It should be spoken into the comforting darkness of a shared quilt covering warm bodies, if he can speak it at all.

Draco’s stare is intolerable. The sudden heat is cruel; it withers his soul which even now struggles to bloom in his frigid, wartorn soul. It is a heat worse than the painfully familiar hatred because it is something akin to love. Harry pulls him in for a kiss, his mouth more bearable than the silver moonlight of his eyes, which reflect back a brightness he can’t see. When they part, Harry can feel the faint tickle of a sigh that slips involuntarily from Draco’s burning lips.

“Shall we go back inside?” Draco asks, pulling his arm from Harry’s grip only long enough to open the cabin door. It is warm inside. The only light is the warm glow of a candle glowing on the bedside table. The wood stove will need to be replenished before they go to sleep.

“Gladly. It’s freezing.” Harry slips in the door before too much heat can escape.

“How many times must I teach you that warming spell?” Draco says, a smiling already curving his thin lips. As he shuts the heavy wooden door behind him, the pale moon disappears, but she still hangs there in the sky, radiating her meagre light onto the moor below.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/mahouatsuko) and [Tumblr](https://meidorin.tumblr.com/).


End file.
